Axis: the Praxis blog

What happens when we write? Why do we teach writing the way we do? How does writing education engage with questions of race, gender, accessibility, and cultural difference? How does the writing center function as an interdisciplinary space?

Axis extends the writing center conversation from Praxis, our peer reviewed scholarly journal, into a public forum. Exploratory, experimental, and informative, the blog speaks to questions on the cutting edge of writing center theory and practice. Axis features writing from undergraduate and graduate educators at the University of Texas at Austin, and guest writers from universities across the United States.

We here at Praxis hope you’re having a great end of the summer as we head toward the Fall semester. As this is the last week of the summer session (where has the time gone?!) here at UT, I’m going to write a bit about some of our upcoming projects and plans as the summer semester concludes.

This summer has been an exciting time for us in the University of Texas at Austin’s University Writing Center. Having settled into our new space in the Perry-Castaneda Library and wrapped up our first year here, we’ve now begun implementing a new paperless intake system for checking in students and pairing them with their consultants. Where students used to fill out a long survey asking questions about their assignment and the consultants would receive clipboards with printouts of the student’s answers, students now fill out a much more abbreviated survey and the consultants are alerted on their mobile devices that the student has arrived. It’s more convenient for the students and more environmentally conscious on our end, and I’m excited to see how this new improvement to our infrastructure improves our efficiency and productivity.

Most importantly for my purposes, however, has been using the summer to train Casey Sloan, our new managing editor. Working with Casey has been a dream thus far (I have yet to meet a more efficient human being), and once my tenure cycles out next May, she’ll take the reins as the senior editor. I’m eagerly awaiting seeing what she’ll do with the publication during her time in charge!

Now, a few announcements. First, the summer review cycle is coming to end and the Fall review cycle will begin in a couple of weeks. If you’re on our editorial board and still need to submit your review, then please make sure that you submit your reviews by August 15 so we can get decisions back to our authors.

Next, we have a couple of exciting special issues coming up as Casey and I have been hard at work mapping out Praxis’s path. In Fall of 2016, we’re proud to present a special guest-edited issue by Michele Eodice and Shannon Madden on access and equity for graduate students in the writing center. In the Fall of 2017, we’ll be publishing an issue guest-edited by Genie Giaimo on access

Finally, the Axis blog itself is undergoing a slight change in terms of content and scheduling. As always, we’re still accepting submissions for content (send them to praxisuwc@gmail.com), but Casey and I are in the process of scheduling blogs written by members of the UT Austin UWC staff. These entries will offer a variety of perspectives and topics, and I’m looking forward to seeing what our staff comes up with. One of the many benefits of the UT UWC is that we have a number of staffers from many different backgrounds and degrees of experience, and the Axis blog will be an opportunity to give them a public forum to voice their ideas, passions, and concerns. We’ll also be soliciting some blogs from consultants who are interested in writing about their experiences. Look forward to it.

As always, it’s a joy to serve as an editor for Praxis, and I’m eager to see what the future holds. Since its beginnings, the journal has grown from a small, student-run website to a peer-reviewed publication, and we hope with these special issues and new developments to the blog, Praxis’s star will continue to rise even higher.

Thanks for reading. The Axis blog will go on hiatus for a couple of weeks and will return the week of August 24th.